The minister limped into his office in the Leopold Palace at speed, and if the carpet hadn’t been so thick and the distance between the huge door and his desk hadn’t been quite so vast we might not have noticed the shiny special shoe and the even shinier metal brace. Well, almost. We were looking out for it, of course: there were so many jokes told about Joey’s cloven hoof that it was even more notorious than he was – almost a Berlin tourist attraction – and the judge and I kept a close eye on his club foot just so we could say that we’d seen it, in just the same way you wanted to be able to say you’d seen Lotte the bear in the pit at Köllnischer Park, or Anita Berber at the Heaven and Hell Club. As Goebbels limped into the room the judge and I stood up and saluted in the customary way and he flapped a delicate little hand back over his shoulder in imitation of the way the leader did it – as if swatting an irritating mosquito, or dismissing some sycophant, of which there seemed to be a plentiful supply in the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.
